4/9/2010 9:46 AM
SPIRITUAL DIARY
My Worship Time Focus: God answers prayer
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: 1 Samuel 1:1-8
Message of the verses: “1
¶ Now there was a certain man from
Ramathaim-zophim from the hill country of Ephraim, and his name was Elkanah the
son of Jeroham, the son of Elihu, the son of Tohu, the son of Zuph, an
Ephraimite. 2 He had two wives: the name
of one was Hannah and the name of the other Peninnah; and Peninnah had children,
but Hannah had no children. 3 Now this
man would go up from his city yearly to worship and to sacrifice to the LORD of
hosts in Shiloh . And the two sons of Eli,
Hophni and Phinehas, were priests to the LORD there. 4 When the day came that Elkanah sacrificed, he
would give portions to Peninnah his wife and to all her sons and her daughters;
5 but to Hannah he would give a double
portion, for he loved Hannah, but the LORD had closed her womb. 6 Her rival, however, would provoke her
bitterly to irritate her, because the LORD had closed her womb. 7 It happened year after year, as often as she
went up to the house of the LORD, she would provoke her; so she wept and would
not eat. 8 Then Elkanah her husband said
to her, ‘Hannah, why do you weep and why do you not eat and why is your heart
sad? Am I not better to you than ten sons?’”
I
begin today to study the book of 1 Samuel and I am looking forward to dig
deeper into this book as I have read it on many different occasions, but never
studied it like I plan to study it this time.
I will be using Warren Wiersbe’s commentary, which is something that I
have been using for a long time in my Bible study. His book for 1 Samuel is called “Be
Successful.”
The
book of Judges is the book of no kings, and in the book of Ruth the ancestry of
David is seen. The book of 1 Samuel is
the book of man’s king and the book of 2 Samuel is the book of God’s King as it
describes the activity of King David to whom God promised that the Messiah
would be born into his line.
In
the beginning of his commentary on the book of 1 Samuel Warren Wiersbe points
out that the name for the Lord, “The Lord of Hosts” is first seen and is used
some 300 times in the Scriptures. In
using this name for the Lord it shows that the Lord is in control of all things
and then Wiersbe goes on to say that the word “history” actually means “His
story.” As one begins in the beginning
of the Bible and reads he will be able to see that God is in control and one of
the major purposes of God’s plan was to bring a Savior into the world in order
to pay the penalty of mans sins and this story is weaved throughout the Old
Testament and in many cases it begins with the story of a baby, and in many of
those cases it begins with a barren woman having a baby, and this is the case
with the story of Samuel who was born to a barren woman whose name was
Hannah. Hannah was married to a Levite
who had another wife who had many children, yet Hannah did not have any
children and this made her very sad.
Hannah’s name means “a woman of grace,” and she surely needed grace from
the Lord in order to put up with the heckling of Elkanah’s other wife Peninnah
for she would cause much grief for Hannah teasing her because she did not have
any children of her own. This is how the
book of 1 Samuel begins, and that is with a divided family and that is the
reason that the Lord’s plan was that one man and one woman live together for
one lifetime. God graciously allowed the
man to have more than one wife, yet as you look at the stories in the OT they
never seem to be a good story.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: I am thankful that I only have one wife
because that is the way God designed it and as I look at all of the trouble
that these OT saints had having more than one wife it is good that in today’s
society that there can only be one man and one woman married at a time.
As
I look at the stories in the OT and in the NT I can clearly see that God is in
control of all things even though at times it is hard to see. As I look at our nation and the terrible
leadership that we now have and as I look at the end times and that our country
is not really a main part of it, I realized long ago that we as a nation had to
fall from the prominence of being a world leader and as I look at the
sinfulness of the nation that I live in and the weakness of most churches I can
see that God has given us the leadership that we deserve. This makes me very sad.
My Steps of Faith for Today:
- I want to trust the Lord to work out His plan in the world and His plan in my life and I want to stay true to Him all of the time even though things are troublesome at this point in my life.
4/9/2010 10:51 AM
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